Monday, March 25, 2013

INSEAD is a truly global business school, offering Master of
Business Administration, Master of Finance, PhD in management, and various
executive education programs. It has campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu
Dhabi, plus partnerships with the Wharton School and the Kellogg School of
Management. INSEAD’s main About Us page is here.

OVERALL GRADE: C

Products/Services: C

In terms of navigation, the best feature of the About Us page is the
tab labeled “One-click access,” which pops up a well-organized site menu. Great
content is wasted without great navigation. (See our Commandment
7 of About Us pages: Keep Navigation Easy.)

Unfortunately, the content of INSEAD’s About Us pages isn’t
stellar. The main text of the page, in five small, dense paragraphs, needs to
be broken up with headings and bulleted points (degrees offered, campuses,
partnerships). A link to 50 Alumni
Who Changed the World and a more prominent link to Faculty and
Research would be great additions. As it stands, the list of Publications is more
enticing than the main About Us page: it summarizes the programs offered and
has visuals as well.

The events on the timeline demonstrate INSEAD’s
global scope: well done. The 50th-anniversary logo reminds us that this school
has a long, solid reputation. We don’t mind that the anniversary occurred in
2007: it’s great to show pride in your corporate history. However, we mind very
much that once we click on the logo to visit the 50th
anniversary site, we’re stranded, with no links to take us back to the
current pages. Big mistake!

And here’s an even bigger one. Having read all INSEAD’s
About Us pages, we still didn’t know what “INSEAD” means. Is it a foreign name?
An acronym? Wikipedia reveals that the school was originally the Institut
Europeen d’Administration des Affaires (European Institute of
Business Administration).

At CorporateHistory.net, we revel in primary documents, real
or virtual. We do not consider Wikipedia a scholarly resource - but it is a terrific way to find out what
people want to know about you, so you don’t miss obvious points. In the
Wikipedia article on INSEAD, the explanation of the name is in the very first
paragraph.

Accessibility: B

Aside from the standard information, the Contact page (accessible
via a link in the header) offers Quick Links to degrees, faculty, and alumni.
In the lower part of the page, the collapsible list of departments with phones
and emails is an elegant solution to a list that fills several pages when
expanded.

Personality: D

Under Who We Are, the Constituencies
link defaults to bios of the school’s interim deans. Why not the chairman, who
presumably sets the direction of the school? But the chairman’s bio doesn’t
talk about his vision for the school’s current and future goals, either. Nor
does the Mission
statement. Of its five points, only two are directly related to business
education, and nothing here indicates why we’d want a degree from INSEAD rather
than Wharton or Harvard Business School.

TAKEAWAY

Don’t overlook the obvious: check Wikipedia or other outside
sources to see what people want to know about you.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section
accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks
we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential
customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for
us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). Today’s example was chosen at
random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Bruce Feiler, author of The Secrets of Happy Families, says: "The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative." That's not just his opinion. It's buttressed by research done at Emory University and the US Naval Academy. You can substitute "company narrative" for "family narrative" because the benefits of knowing one's organizational history are so similar:

Post 9/11, offspring who "knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress" (a quote from psychologist Marshall Duke, co-author of the Emory study).

"Jim Collins, a management expert and the author of Good to Great, told me that successful human enterprises of any kind, from companies to countries, go out of their way to capture their core identity. In Mr. Collins's terms, they 'preserve core, while stimulating progress.'"

"The military has also found that teaching recruits about the history of their service increases their camaraderie and ability to bond more closely with their unit." (Quotations 2 and 3 are from Feiler's book.)

Families use holidays, parties, vacations, and other events to transmit their narratives to the next generation. Businesses have an array of means to tell the story of their corporate history and values: parties, sure, but also conferences, internal communications, the About Us pages of their website, social media, team-building activities, and more. Anniversaries present ideal opportunities! What matters is the message This is our history, not the form.

Monday, March 11, 2013

After being temporary roommates via an Airbnb
rental, Jamie Wong and Samrat Jeyaprakash set out to solve the problem, “What
do we do once we get there?” The company they founded, Vayable, now connects vetted
local tour guides with travelers seeking unique experiences in New York,
Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, and 600 other cities worldwide. By late 2012,
Vayable offered over 2,500 tours at prices ranging from $5 to $5,000. As a new
company Vayable doesn’t have much of a corporate history, but it makes the most
of what it’s got. The company’s About Us page ishere.

OVERALL GRADE: B

Products/Services: A

The main About Us page (Our Stories) offers first-hand accounts
of travelers to exotic locales who are excited about sharing their experiences.
It’s a great introduction to the company, one that honors Commandment 2 of
CorporateHistory.net’s 10
Commandments of About Us pages: Thou Shalt Not Generalize. The company’s
actual mission statement (Our Purpose)
is considerably less enticing: “To enable entrepreneurship, cultural exchange,
community-building and exploration worldwide by empowering people to share
experiences with others.” And we don’t even get gorgeous photos of exotic
places to go with that mouthful!

The layout of How
This Works is simple and clear, reminding us (probably not coincidentally)
of Airbnb,
which we evaluated in May 2011. The opening screen features an enticing
photo, one-line summaries of three tours we know Carnival Cruises will never
offer us, and brief statements on four topics of concern to travelers: quality
of the tour, trustworthiness of the guides, ease of use, and payments.

Scrolling down How This Works takes us to a
3-step guide to booking, then a series of testimonials, then links to a page of
media coverage. This is an excellent
sequence, worthy of emulation. Our only quibble is that there’s no link within
the text to a page where we can start searching for and booking tours.

The Media page is
a model for such pages: logo of the publication, date, and the title of the
article serving as a link to the article itself. Even visitors who don’t click
the link get a sense of the positive press response to Vayable.

Personality: C

Vayable’s guides are the face of the company, and the Ambassadors are the
highest-ranking guides. But there’s no way to search them out: the Ambassadors
page blithely tells us to look for the Ambassador badge on the guide’s Profile
and Experience pages. Why not make it simple for us to find the best of the
best, and let them impress us enough to search for tours?

Vayable’s management appears on the Team page ... we think. Nice photos,
interesting bios, but what roles do these three play in Vayable’s operations? Titles,
please, and how they became involved Vayable, and why. On the main About Us
page (Our Stories), Jamie Wong (listed
there as co-founder) recounts an outing in Morocco that changed her life, but
there’s no link from that to her Team bio, or vice versa.

Accessibility: B

The Support page
is also simply and clearly laid out: each heading shows the most frequently
asked questions, with an option to see more. Why not rearrange the questions, so
one column is aimed at tour guides, the other at travelers? In the current
layout, travelers have to scroll past all the FAQs for tour guides.

One major navigation error: there’s no way to get back to
the Vayable site from the Support page or any of its sub-pages. The Vayable
icon isn’t a link to the Home page, and there are no headers or footers with
links.

TAKEAWAY

Remember your audience’s context. If you’re a new company
offering a new service, be sure to explain who you are and how you operate. Otherwise,
your business history may be “history” all too soon.

Does your Web site’s “About Us” section
accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks
we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential
customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for
us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). Today’s example was chosen at
random; CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company. To talk about your About Us page, contact us!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Richard Ginori porcelain has been synonymous with high style and quality since 1735. Napoleon himself ate from Ginori tableware during the years he ruled Tuscany, and the Vatican sets its tables with Ginori. Now, however, the Ginori factory stands shuttered as the company tries to pull itself out of bankruptcy. A few bad decisions during the economic downturn spiraled into severe debt. Italian courts found a buyer, but that deal fell through.

What an amazing corporate history! Forza, Ginori. Coraggio! Here's hoping a new bid from Lenox becomes the ticket to solvency and renewed growth. We should know the outcome by May. As employee Valentina Puggelli told The New York Times: "There are laws to save pandas. We want to save something as rare."

CorporateHistory.net can help you turn your company history into an effective and beautiful book, DVD, Web site, keynote speech, or campaign. Whether you want to celebrate a company anniversary, honor a retiring CEO, or strategize your corporate storytelling, CorporateHistory.net can help. We believe organizations suffer when their memory erodes, just as people do. Your institutional memory is a stranded asset until you put it to work. Then it becomes a powerful, cost-effective tool for marketing, community relations, and employee pride.Please visit our website:http://www.corporatehistory.net/